how do you get your addicted loved one
to see the damage that they're causing to accept responsibility for how their choices
and behaviors have not only just affected them negatively but affected you negatively
and or the whole rest of the family that's what we're going to be talking about in today's video
for those of you who are new here welcome thank you for joining us you're watching put the shovel
down the youtube channel design specifically help you understand the science and psychology of
addiction so that you can get your life and your loved ones back on track and get back to living
the life that you want to live if that's something that you want to do you're definitely in the right
place this channel is full of information it helps you if you're the family member and you've got
addicted loved ones or if you're a person who's either in early recovery or struggling with a
substance use disorder and thinking about making a change this channel is all about the psychology
and as always i have put a ton of additional resources for you in the description so now
that we said all that let's get back to our topic of how to get an addicted loved one to
acknowledge what the heck is going on it's so frustrating to be dealing with someone who's
in denial about their addiction not only is that frustrating but what's more frustrating is when
someone won't acknowledge how their behavior is affecting you and or the rest of the family
the hurt the lies the manipulation the deceit all of that stuff you feel very wounded and it
can feel like you're never gonna get better or trust this person or be able to have any empathy
for this person unless they can acknowledge that first and honestly i think that's pretty fair
and pretty understandable but you've got to be really careful about how you choose to go about
doing this for example just last week i got this comment and it wasn't the first time i got this
comment i've gotten this comment several times the comment is wow amber i really love this video i'm
gonna send it to my loved one who has an addiction or some kind of comment about wow this video you
nailed it love that part but the second part of oh i'm gonna send it to my addicted loved one
i'm always like oh cringe don't do it and i'm like oh i haven't done it yet before i respond
back and say don't do it the reason is if you're gonna take a video that i made which hey i'm super
happy that you like it and that you want to share it definitely don't want to discourage you from
sharing but i do want to discourage you from using my videos or any other piece of information that
you read in a news article that you see on tv any other youtube video as a weapon to try to
directly confront someone about their addiction about their denial about how their behaviors are
affecting the people around them all that kind of stuff because i'm always teaching you guys don't
come at it head on don't directly confront someone with that sort of sharp in-your-face kind of stuff
because the more you do that the more walls that come up here's how i want you to think about it do
not try to engage this problem through the front door because by now your loved one has got maximum
security on that front door like they got like camera to see if anyone's coming i'm telling you
i got maximum security on this like come through the front door of addressing someone's addiction
it's not gonna work you're gonna have to find a way around that in fact not long ago i made this
video about how to confront someone about their substance use disorder if you haven't seen that
one that might also be a good one i'll put it up at the end of this video but the important thing
here is don't come at it head on and you might be wondering what do you mean by come at it head-on
don't try to tell someone that they're addicted don't try to guilt someone about what they're
doing or make them feel shameful it's not that you're wrong hey i know that you're right
it's just that that method isn't effective and i'm all about doing what works last week when i got
that question about you know can i send them your video what i ended up replying to that person was
hey if you're gonna send them one of my videos send them one of my videos that you think that
they'll totally agree with the reason is because when you do that you're actually helping to build
rapport between the your loved one and the videos and if they feel like i get them and i understand
their side of the story well enough so send them videos where i talk about their side of the story
they're gonna feel heard and understood even though they've never even met me then once you
can do that if they start hearing some of these other videos where i start talking about your side
of the situation that information is going to be able to come through so it's kind of like it's how
you get them to unlock that front door take the deadbolt off and let that other information come
through so please by all means share my videos anywhere and everywhere you want to i love it it
helps me most of all it helps other people because you never know who's going to watch that video
and it's going to be exactly what they needed at the exact right moment but never use these videos
as a weapon and it's kind of like they're trying to shove this information down their throat i'm
telling you every single time you do that you're making it 10 times worse please please please
do not do this the whole goal here is to figure out how to not hit those defense mechanism trip
wires and in order to do that you've got to really really really understand the psychology
of addiction which is why i'm going to put that playlist up here for you to watch next